Influences of Online Behavioural Ad Avoidance Among Sri Lankans

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key determinants of online ad avoidance where the impact of goal impediment (GI), privacy concern (PC), ad irritation (AI), negative experience (NE), and retargeting (RI) on online ad avoidance (OAA) is explored. Online advertising avoidance can be an action or steps taken by viewers while they are surfing the internet. It is identified as a significant challenge for digital advertising. Literature has implications that goal impediment, privacy concern, ad irritation, and negative experience to be the key determinants of ad avoidance. There are implications that GI, PC, and AI are having an impact on NE and NE has an impact on OAA. Therefore, NE is identified as a mediator. Further RT is identified in the literature as having a moderating role between NE and OAA. To examine the impact of the key determinants and the OAA, 12 hypotheses were developed and a quantitative approach was used with a structured questionnaire for primary data collection. A convenient sample of 300 was collected from the Western province. In terms of measuring the relationships between variables, the researcher employed the Partial Least Square (PLS) structural equation modeling with SPSS and Smart PLS tools. All the direct hypotheses and the mediating hypotheses were supported by the data. Moderating the impact of RT was not supported. The findings of the study reveal valuable implications for online advertisers to consider to improve their reachability and viewership.